Augmented Reality and Insurance

A few weeks ago, Microsoft held an event where they unveiled their latest operating system, Windows 10. A host of new and improved features were added to the latest chapter in Windows, but what many took away from the event was a new offering from Microsoft, Hololens.

Hololens is an augmented reality headset that lets users see 3D holographic objects in their physical space. Real time holograms are accomplished through a variety of processors, sensors, and cameras that all work in real time allowing the user to work or play in the physical and augmented reality plane. Until you actually view a demo, it can be quite confusing as to how it works.

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The event demo focused on 3 main uses for Hololens; gaming, real time chat support, and design and creation. Although these are the easiest uses for the Hololens, the potential for such a device is in fact greater.

One of the early partners in developing and using this technology is NASA, which they use to visit a virtual Mars, while learning more about the planet and what might be involved to eventually land a human on the red planet.

The same technology being used to map and create a virtual planet could also be used to inspect a field of crops or inspect a home; in fact, an inspector could summon blueprints of the structure along with important documents right from their office.

And let’s not forget about commercial drones; we have seen an Oculus Rift virtual reality headset control the direction of a personal drone, but it is only a matter of time before personal drones are interfaced with Hololens allowing the user to not only view the full camera, but also control the flight direction through hand gestures or eye movements.

The largest target market for Hololens right now are the gaming and design crowd, but this technology can easily be adapted to suit the needs to insurance and farming industry as well. Of course this is all speculation as Hololens has yet to be released to the public, but here is hoping the future just got a bit closer.